Page 2 of The Perfect Revenge (Jessie Hunt #41)

Hannah Dorsey didn’t know why she was so nervous.

When her big sister, criminal profiler Jessie Hunt, asked her to take a ride with her and Ryan after dinner, a little alarm bell went off, though she couldn’t explain why.

Jessie said they were going for ice cream, which they’d done on many occasions in the past. And her sister’s demeanor was the same as usual.

So why did Hannah feel the hair on her arms standing up?

What really got Hannah's guard up was when they diverted from the normal route home and pulled into a covered mall parking garage.

Ryan drove in and out of the parking rows, making sharp turns and speeding up as he rounded the corners and took the ramps down from one level to the next.

It was almost as if he was trying to determine if they were being followed.

"What's going on?" she asked both of them. "We're not a mall family, and you're driving like a crazy person."

“We’ll explain soon,” Jessie looked back over her shoulder. “In a moment, we are going to park, hop out of this car, and make our way to another one. We need to be very quick about it. Are you ready?”

"I guess I have to be." Suddenly, Hannah wasn't very hungry.

Ryan rounded the corner and went down the ramp to the final, fourth level. There were very few cars this far down in the mall garage at 9:30 P.M. on a Thursday night. He parked right next to the elevators and turned off the car.

“Let’s go,” he said, opening his door.

Jessie did the same, so Hannah followed suit. She started toward the elevator, but Jessie shook her head, pointing at the sign for the stairs.

“More options that way.”

Hannah heard a squeal and glanced back at the ramp leading down from the level above.

It could simply be another mall customer, but clearly neither Jessie nor Ryan wanted to take the chance and motioned for her to hurry.

Jessie took the lead, leaping up the stairs two at a time.

Hannah was next. Ryan brought up the rear.

Jessie skipped the third and second parking levels. When they got up to the first floor, she headed straight for the exit out to the street. A black SUV was parked in a loading zone out front with its hazard lights flashing. The back door opened as they approached.

“That’s our ride,” Jessie said, walking briskly toward the vehicle, jumping in, and sliding over. Hannah did the same and took the middle seat. Ryan got in after her and closed the door.

“We’re good,” he said to the driver, who immediately took off.

Hannah studied the man at the wheel. Likely in his late twenties, with a crewcut and a stern expression, he was wearing a suit jacket. In the passenger seat was another man, also in a suit jacket, who was closer to 35. He looked weathered, and his close-cropped hair had the slightest hints of gray.

“What’s our ETA?” Ryan asked the driver, who was maneuvering through the streets in the same evasive manner that Ryan had adopted in the garage.

“About six minutes.”

“Do I get to know what’s happening now?” Hannah asked.

"In about six minutes," Jessie told her.

***

It only took five.

By the time that they pulled into the driveway of a small cottage house in nearby Carthay Square, Hannah was starting to feel slightly nauseated from all the sudden sharp turns and unexpected lane changes.

The driver shot forward into the open garage, which was barely large enough to hold one vehicle.

“Wait until the door closes to get out,” instructed the older man in the passenger seat.

“So are these guys private security or law enforcement?” Hannah asked her sister.

“What do you think?”

Hannah looked at the men again, this time more closely.

“Clean-shaven. Short haircuts. Nondescript suits. Feels like the requirements of a government gig. I’m guessing FBI?”

“Close,” Ryan said. “U.S. Marshals.”

“You can exit the vehicle now,” the Marshal in the passenger seat said once the garage door closed, doing so himself.

They got out and headed for the door to the house. The passenger seat Marshal opened it and stepped inside. Hannah was about to do the same when Jessie put a hand on her shoulder.

She looked at her sister, who, at five foot ten, was a mere inch taller than her. They shared the same green eyes, a gift from the now-dead serial killer who was father to them both. But while Hannah's hair was long and blonde, Jessie's was shoulder-length and brown.

Over a decade separated them. But Jessie, despite the horrors she’d encountered, looked younger than her 32 years. And Hannah, nineteen, could pass for her mid-twenties. They’d even occasionally been mistaken for fraternal twins. Right now, Jessie was frowning.

“Before we go in there, I have to tell you something.”

“Okay.” Hannah didn’t get nervous the way most people did. Even so, she felt the slightest hint of anxiety in the pit of her stomach.

“You’ve got to let me get through this before you say anything, okay?”

“Okay.” The pit grew slightly.

“I’m sure you remember six weeks ago when Finn Anderton was moved out of the hospital.”

“Of course.”

It was a silly question considering that the night was burned in Hannah’s brain.

After her college classmate, friend, and almost more was stabbed repeatedly in a campus parking lot and almost died, he was transferred to the hospital, where he lay unconscious for nearly a month.

She’d spent most evenings there, sometimes in his room, the waiting area in the hall, or in the cafeteria downstairs.

She was in that last location, napping at a cafeteria table with her head resting on her folded hands, when Finn had been secreted away.

The security officer guarding his room told her that a group of men who identified themselves as U.S.

Marshals had removed him, saying his family wanted him transferred to a hospice to live out his remaining time.

Hannah had always been suspicious of the story.

The hospital security footage that she’d hacked had been wiped clean for the stretch of time when Finn was moved.

And Hannah’s subsequent attempts to follow the family from their house in the hopes that they might lead her to the hospice proved fruitless.

In fact, now that she thought about it, they'd used the same technique that Ryan had employed tonight: parking in a covered lot and disappearing into a mall or grocery store.

Often, they wouldn't return for hours. She had suspected something fishy was going on, but was now convinced that Marshals had been giving the family rides to see Finn.

“Is he here?” she demanded of her sister.

“Yes, but you can’t see him yet,” Jessie said. “I need to explain some things first. And you need to keep your voice down, no matter what I say.”

“Okay, explain.”

“I’m the one who organized the transfer,” Jessie said simply.

Hannah felt the pit in her stomach melt, burned away by the rage that replaced it. She wanted to yell at her sister, whom she’d asked for help in finding Finn and who had apparently known his location the whole time. But she couldn’t yell, so she hissed instead.

“Go on.”

“We were worried that Finn was too exposed at the hospital,” Jessie explained in a whisper.

“Even with a guard posted outside his room 24/7, he was vulnerable. Whoever attacked him had to know that if he ever woke up, he could reveal their identity. So the attacker might be willing to take some dangerous risks to get to him. We needed Finn taken to a location that we could better control.”

“So what, you called in a favor from Murph?” Hannah demanded.

“That’s correct,” someone said, stepping out from the shadows.

Hannah recognized him immediately. It was Patrick “Murph” Murphy, a senior U.S. Marshal who had once hidden Jessie, Ryan, and herself in a mountain cabin safe house when they were being hunted by a notorious serial killer known as the Night Hunter.

“How’s it going, Murph?” she said, trying to control her frustration.

“It’s good to see you again, Hannah.”

Murph had the certitude of a man who’d been dealing with situations like this all his life. His physical bearing reinforced that image. Short and trim, with tightly cropped light brown hair, he projected a no-nonsense sensibility.

“You too,” she said before returning her attention to her sister. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you were at risk too,” Jessie said.

“First at that hospital. If you were in the room with Finn and the attacker came to finish him off, do you think they’d just leave you be?

You’d be a witness. And even after he was moved, we feared that if you knew where Finn was and went to visit him, the attacker might follow you there. ”

“You couldn’t do what you did with the family, and have the Marshals take me secretly, like they did tonight?”

Murph shook his head.

“We don’t have the manpower or financial resources for that,” he said.

“It’s one thing to periodically get the family here.

That can be justified to my bosses. But his not-quite-girlfriend?

I don’t think so. Besides, the family wasn’t all that enthused about you even being at the hospital so much, so they weren’t going to be okay with you coming here. ”

Hannah knew Finn’s family didn’t love her.

She got the feeling that they blamed her for what happened to him, even though she hadn’t been around at the time of the attack.

Of course, since Finn met her, he had been in a few dangerous scrapes, probably more than he’d encountered in his entire life up to that point.

“So you obviously had the hospital surveillance footage wiped,” she said, returning her ire to Jessie. “Did you have Jamil and Beth slow walk things when I asked them for help finding Finn?”

Jamil Winslow and Beth Ryerson were the researchers for Jessie and Ryan’s LAPD unit, Homicide Special Section. Hannah had been working as an intern in their office this summer.

“No,” Jessie told her. “The only people who knew the truth, other than Finn’s family, are in this house right now. I didn’t want to put them in the position of lying to you. I didn’t even tell Kat, so she wouldn’t be put in the middle of things. “

“So why are you telling me the truth now?” she asked, and then, despite herself, added, “Is he dead? Is that why I’m here? So I can say goodbye?”

Jessie sighed. “No. I’m telling you because he woke up, very briefly, about a week ago.”

Hannah felt a million questions rise in her throat, but bit her tongue. She worried she might shout, so she swallowed hard and said nothing.

Jessie continued. "He was conscious for about fifteen seconds, according to the nurse on duty.

His eyes opened, and he made some sounds.

But then he faded back into unconsciousness.

He hasn't woken up since, but the nurse said there has been more physical movement since that time.

The doctor has come by three times. He believes that there's a good chance that Finn might wake up sometime very soon. "

Jessie paused, waiting for a response. But Hannah still didn’t trust how her words would come out, so she stayed silent. Jessie kept going.

"There was no point in telling you the situation as long as his condition remained the same.

It wouldn't help either of you, and it could put you at risk if you insisted on seeing him.

But now that his condition has changed, so did our evaluation.

In fact, Rufus suggested that hearing your voice might help him wake up sooner. "

“Rufus is here?” Hannah said.

“I’m here,” he said, stepping out from an alcove off the hallway.

Rufus Harrington was a private security officer from a company called Security Analysis Services , or SAS.

Back when a hitwoman named Ash Pierce was hunting down Hannah, Jessie, Ryan, and their friend Kat, Jessie had hired SAS to essentially serve as bodyguards.

Rufus, a former special forces soldier who had moved into personal security once he left the service, was part of the team.

He looked more like a gymnast (which he was in high school) than a brutish bodyguard.

He still wore his dark hair in the buzz-cut style that she remembered, and he exuded a relaxed vibe that masked his skill set.

“Hi Rufus,” she said.

“Hi Hannah,” he said with a sheepish wave.

“Have you been watching Finn this whole time?”

He shrugged. “I’m part of the team. I mostly work nights.”

“And you think that hearing my voice might help him?”

“I don’t think it will hurt.”

Hannah turned to Jessie.

“Couldn’t it have helped all these weeks when I was in the dark?” She could hear the bitterness in her own voice.

"Like I said, there didn't seem to be any point until he started showing progress," Jessie replied. "And like I also said, we were worried that you coming here might tip off the attacker."

“I wouldn’t have taken any unreasonable risks.”

“You say that, but we know that you put tracking devices on Finn’s parents’ vehicles. That doesn’t strike me as a measured course of action.”

Hannah chose not to address that point and focused on another instead. “So to be clear, you’ve been lying to me all these weeks. While I was desperately searching for him, you let me think that he was in a hospice on the brink of death.”

“I didn’t lie,” Jessie objected half-heartedly. “I just wasn’t fully forthcoming.”

“That’s a lame justification. You snuck him out of the hospital, making sure to do it when you knew I was elsewhere. Then, when I asked you for help in finding him, you led me to believe that nothing could be done.”

“You were spiraling, Hannah!” Her sister’s tone was pleading. “Your grades were falling. You spent all your time at the hospital. I wanted you to have some semblance of a normal life. And it worked. Once Finn was moved, you bounced back.”

Hannah had a sudden urge to slap her sister.

Fearing she might actually take a swing, Hannah pressed her palm hard against her leg in an effort to control the desire.

She was livid. Jessie knew how much she’d been struggling in the wake of Finn’s disappearance: the lack of sleep, the physical sickness—actual nausea—she felt when she thought about what he must be going through.

And yet her sister had still kept this from her. Closing her eyes, she reminded herself that Jessie wasn't her priority right now. Instead, she tried to keep her focus on Finn.

“Can I see him now?” she asked, her tone emotionless by design.

“Yes,” Jessie said. “Rufus will take you in.